Why is Roku or Apple TV better than what comes bundled with most components now-a-days? My TV, BD player and my Receiver all have the ability to stream movies, etc. So, why pay money for one of these devices?

tom, i currently stream music to all of my receivers/pre-amps. i have all onkyo devices, 2 receivers and 1 pre-amp and all of them are network ready. they are all connected to a cat6 gigabit network run throughout my house. i can operate any of them from either of my iOS devices via wi-fi and control them.

they are all connected to a 2tb NAS that is also connected via cat6 on the network. with modern receivers, it's very easy. i stream FLAC, MP3, WMALL & iTunes music throughout the house on any receiver or all at the same time. I can even connect to the NAS with my oppo 83&93 players and play music.

music resolution is from 44.1khz/16bit to 96khz/24bit and i have no trouble streaming any of it. the iOS app i use most is OREMOTE, but, i also, sometimes use Onkotron. Oremote is by far the best of the two.

most of the big name receivers offer network streaming and apps for iOS & Android devices to control their receivers. almost any DLNA or UpNp NAS (Network Attached Storage & Universal Plug and Play) device will work. i recommend hardwired networking simply because, no matter where you are or who you are, wireless can be interrrupted by the strangest things. the most sure thing is wired, if you can.

if your gonna go wired, use cat6 and a gigabit router & switches to keep gigabit speeds from end to end. best of luck.

I really like to be able to play music in Zone 2, and to do that while playing a different source in Zone 1, I need the music source to be analog not just digital.

solarrdadd, do you know if the Onyko's suffer from this same limitation? i.e. if the receiver's D/A converter is busy with an HDMI source in the main room, can you still stream music using the receiver's native network capability to a second zone at the same time?

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throughout the house on any receiver or all at the same time

Well, that's intriguing. Do you mean that you can synchronize the stream between devices? I'm trying to NOT introduce another receiver for the second zone, but I suppose if I am completely seduced by some application, I could buy more hardware.

I will try to find more information about Oremote. Thank you!

I share your preference for copper. No problems there at the moment.

I'm looking at Apple TV, but it has only HDMI and optical outputs. Does anybody know the price/practicality of converting that TOSLINK to analog using something like this thing from Monoprice? (Assuming that - in zone 2 - I do not believe I will be able to hear the difference between this device and something that is more costly).

Do you have some kind of server software running on the NAS or is it just basically a Samba share? That is, do you have anything else managing the network streaming besides the Onkyos and a dumb storage disk? (yeah, I know only enough about networking to be dangerous).